With the development of wideband access technologies, operators gradually accept and deploy an Optical Access Network (OAN) to provide service of faster rate and higher quality for users. A PON is a point-to-multipoint optical access technology. As shown in FIG. 1, the PON is composed of an OLT, ONUs and an Optical Distribution Network (ODN) where an optical splitter is located, and one OLT is connected with a plurality of ONUs through the ODN at the same time. Wherein the ONU can be terminals of various forms, including an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) used for family users, a Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) used for multi-dwelling users, and a business user type ONU used for various commercial occasions and residential users.
As shown in FIG. 1, in practical deployment, the distances between the ONUs and the OLT will change along with the actual physical placement locations of the ONUs, some are near and some are far. Considering such circumstances, in the PON system based on a Time-Division Multiple Address (TDMA) technology, the ONUs with different physical distances to the OLT are required to be regulated to be equidistant to the OLT in logical sequence, therefore, conflict is avoided when the OLT distributes an uplink time slot to each ONU, and all the ONUs can send data on the uplink according to the time slot arrangement of the OLT. The means of regulating the ONUs to be equidistant to the OLT is to calculate an equalization delay signal corresponding to each ONU based on different distances between all the ONUs to the OLT, and then each ONU, when transmitting data on the uplink, can adds the corresponding delay based on the equalization delay signal corresponding to the ONU itself, so that it can be ensured that the conflict resulting from transmitting data by the ONUs on the uplink is avoided.
At present, in the existing standard of G bit Passive Optical Network (GPON), the equalization delay signal is transmitted by the OLT through a Ranging_time message when the ONUs are in an O4 state, namely in a ranging state, Here, the Ranging_time message belongs to a Physical Layer Operation Administration and Maintenance (PLOAM) message. The OLT may transmit a Ranging_time message to each ONU for three times after measuring the distance of the ONU, wherein an equalization delay signal corresponding to the ONU is included in the Ranging_time message; and the ONU performs follow-up corresponding processing after receiving the Ranging_time message. With the method, operations can be performed well under normal conditions, but a problem occurs in a trunk optical fiber protection mode.
In the application of PON deployment, some types of users require higher security and hope that operators can provide a security mechanism to ensure that the service channels are not interrupted, or require secondarily that, the service channels can restore quickly as soon as the service channels are interrupted. Therefore, protection and quick switching are required on the PON which bears the operation of user service, and PON protection mode needs to be adopted. In the PON protection mode, the OLT is connected with multiple ONUs through one or more optical splitters; there can be at least one optical interface on the OLT; a channel that each optical interface is connected with each ONU through the optical splitter is called as a protection channel, namely, there are at least one protection channel on the OLT; and the protection channels are divided into a primary channel and a standby channel in general. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the architecture of an existing typical protection network adopting a PON protection mode in a trunk optical fiber protection mode; As shown in FIG. 2, the channel corresponding to optical interface PON LT (0) is a primary channel, and the channel corresponding to optical interface PON LT (1) is a standby channel.
In the trunk optical fiber protection mode, if the protection mode is triggered, all the ONUs are required to be switched to the channel corresponding to the standby OLT. On the basis of the difference of physical positions of the primary OLT and the standby OLT, each ONU is required to update the equalization delay signal, and the updated equalization delay signal should correspond to the physical distance between the ONU and the standby OLT, that is to say, each ONU can continue working normally only after being regulated to be logically equidistant to the standby OLT, so that conflict on the uplink can be avoided.
Following the mode defined in the existing GPON standard, the equalization delay signal corresponding to each ONU connected with the OLT is calculated at the OLT side, and then the OLT notifies all the ONUs connected with the OLT of the equalization delay signal corresponding to each ONU through the Ranging_time messages; and in order to ensure the transmission reliability of the equalization delay signal, the Ranging_time messages need to be transmitted for three times. Since it takes 125 us to transmit the message each time, when the number of the ONUs supported by the OLT reaches 128, it takes 125×3×128 us=48 ms to notify ONUs of the corresponding equalization delay signal just through transmitting the Ranging_time messages, furthermore, before the Ranging_time messages are transmitted under an O4 state, time is spent by the OLT for the ranging of the standby OLT and the ONU, so that the requirement of performing service switching within 50 ms cannot be satisfied basically. Therefore, for the service terminal, the protection effect of protection switching of the practical primary/standby OLT cannot be embodied. In sum, in the trunk optical fiber protection mode, if the existing method above is adopted, the OLT needs to transmit an equalization delay signal corresponding to each ONU to the ONU only through a one-to-one communication mode, so that the quantity of message is too large, and requirement of performing service switching within 50 ms cannot be satisfied basically; therefore, protection switching cannot be implemented effectively in effect.